Sufficient consensus
Epistemic trust describes reliance on the testimony of others for beliefs one cannot check directly. It is unavoidable and it is rational under the right conditions.
Credentials, institutions and track records are the usual supports.
What the result pages leave out
These belong to the subject. People ask about them. They are missing from the agreed coverage.
- Trust transferred to the interface. People increasingly trust the result page rather than any source on it, and the interface carries no accountability.
- The incentive behind the statement. Knowing what the author gains from being believed is more informative than knowing their qualifications.
- Admitted uncertainty. Sources that say what they do not know are more reliable and rank no better for it.
- Trust in aggregates. Review scores and citation counts are trusted as if they were judgements, while being counts of behaviour.
- Repair. Nothing in the system records what happened after a source turned out to be wrong.
What people actually want to know
- What does this author gain if I believe them?
- What do they say they do not know?
- Have they been wrong before, and what did they do about it?
- Am I trusting this source, or the fact that it was listed first?
Say what you do not know. It is the cheapest credible signal available and almost nobody uses it.
More in social epistemology
Search engine epistemologyTen results that agree are ten results that were selected by the same criteria.Algorithmic biasNeutral procedure applied to unequal material produces unequal output.Filter bubblesThe result confirms the assumption that produced the query.Information qualityFluent and confident are easier to produce than accurate.Echo chambersAdding facts to it changes nothing, because the facts arrive through a discredited channel.Distributed epistemologyThe part that is written down is the part that had a reason to be written down.Epistemic injusticeA search result inherits that and turns it into an ordering.